(PhysOrg.com) -- Researchers in Australia have invented a virtual keyboard they say will make typing on touch screen devices such as the iPad much faster. The software senses the positions of the users fingertips and ...

(PhysOrg.com) -- Researchers at MIT have developed software that can track a Lycra fabric glove with a special color pattern. Using only a cheap web camera equipped with a wide angle lens, the software can track hand gestures.

Cornell University engineers have taught a robot to work in a mock-supermarket checkout line, modifying a Baxter robot from Rethink Robotics in Boston to "coactively learn" from humans and make adjustments while an action ...

Forty times stronger than steel and conducting electricity ten times better than silicon, graphene is the wonder material that could one day replace silicon in microchips. Now the University is opening a new Graphene Centre ...

Lovers of physical keyboards, BlackBerry hasn't forgotten about you. The Canadian company's Q10 smartphone, the second phone running the new BlackBerry 10 operating system, began rolling out to U.S. carriers this week.

The next generation of light-manipulating networks may take their lead from designs inspired by spiders and leaves, according to a new report from two Boston College physicists and colleagues at South China Normal University.

Electrons moving in graphene behave in an unusual way, as demonstrated by 2010 Nobel Prize laureates for physics Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov, who performed transport experiments on this one-carbon-atom-thick material. ...

Touchscreen

A touchscreen is a display that can detect the presence and location of a touch within the display area. The term generally refers to touch or contact to the display of the device by a finger or hand. Touchscreens can also sense other passive objects, such as a stylus. However, if the object sensed is active, as with a light pen, the term touchscreen is generally not applicable. The ability to interact directly with a display typically indicates the presence of a touchscreen.

The touchscreen has two main attributes. First, it enables one to interact with what is displayed directly on the screen, where it is displayed, rather than indirectly with a mouse or touchpad. Secondly, it lets one do so without requiring any intermediate device, again, such as a stylus that needs to be held in the hand. Such displays can be attached to computers or, as terminals, to networks. They also play a prominent role in the design of digital appliances such as the personal digital assistant (PDA), satellite navigation devices, mobile phones, and video games.